2022

öffentlich zugänglich

Krippe am Stoppelfeld, Gräfelfinger Str. 133f, 81375 München

Stahl gekantet und lackiert, 1,5 x 4 x 0,2 m

Architecture: nbundm* Architekten, München

Landscape architecture: Mattmer Nagies Eschenlohr Landschaftsarchitekt, Augsburg

Photos: Studio Olaf Becker

Text: Roberta De Righi

Anyone visiting the daycare center Am Stoppelfeld recognizes right away that here, people enjoy being together. Outside, in front of the building, stands a row of three childlike creatures happily holding hands. Title: “One”, “Two”, “Three”. They stand there, wide-legged, self-confident and cheery, their arms open wide to receive all arrivals. Marco Schuler created this work of art out of white enameled steel, accentuating the area in front of the entrance.

Aside from the fact that three is a magic number in myth, religion, and fairy tales, the artist chose it because it has a special relationship to the center itself: here is where infants and toddlers between the ages of zero and three are cared for in three groups.

In his art, Schuler deliberately appropriates the astonished gaze of the child as it gazes at things in the world for the first time. He relies upon an aesthetic based on children’s drawings or arts and crafts, whose strength of expression and succinctness has an immediate effect: “1-2-3” is modeled after a garland of folded paper figures. Schuler enlarged the cutout silhouettes and transferred them to a white enameled steel plate that had also been “folded” with a great deal of strength.

The outlines of the arms and legs are strictly simplified, while the mouths and eyes of the round faces also make them look as if they are paper cut outs. The 1.5-meter-tall figures are slightly bent vertically down the center of each body. This allows the two figures on the outside to be slightly foregrounded, while the one in the middle hangs back.

This also gives the small group an alternating rhythm that makes it look as if they are dancing back and forth. Anchored in the ground without a plinth, the three are even closer to the children. These impish figures accompany the children like oversized mascots throughout the day at the center, from the first greeting to the last farewell.